[Xastir] Newbee question re: Garmin Rino / Cygwin / Xastir and SAR

[Tom Russo]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 11:16:50AM -0700, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <archer at eskimo.com> flavor, containing:
> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Jim Tolbert wrote:
> 
> > I have a 3 year old laptop (Windows XP) that I could dedicate to
> > this.  I have to wipe the disk anyway.  What Linux do I want? Do I
> > reformat the disk before installing Linux?  What do I do about
> > various device drivers?
> 
> You'll get various votes on the different Linuxes.  I personally use
> OpenSuSE, and develop/use Xastir with it.  Other developers and
> users have differing opinions.  One of our developers is running
> FreeBSD.

But that developer (me) wouldn't recommend FreeBSD for anyone other than 
hardcore Unix geeks.  It's better for server systems than desktops (in my 
current opinion after over 15 years of using it), and not well suited for
a first non-windows system.

I recommend one of the Ubuntu systems for sheer ease of install and use,
especially for folks new to Linux.  It is a solid desktop (or laptop)
environment with good support.

If it's older hardware, you probably don't need special device drivers,
except maybe if you want hardware accelerated 3D graphics (which you don't
need for xastir).

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236 AHTB#1 http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
"And, isn't sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is
 one trick, rational thinking, but when you're good and crazy, oooh, oooh,
 oooh, the sky is the limit!"  --- The Tick